As our society becomes more and more dependent on information, and as the technology for collecting and analyzing information improves, we need to begin looking at information in different ways. In particular, we need to look more carefully at both the sources of information and its value. Information laundering is a term that describes attempts to obscure the true source of information. It is a term that generalizes the term money laundering, and that may be the best example to start with. After all, money, in essence, is just a particular form of information.
Everyone is familiar with the basic idea of money laundering: Illicitly obtained money is somehow manipulated and directed so as to appear to be legitimately obtained. Most people understand that if someone steals their money and then puts it through a few bank transactions it does not change the fact that the person who took the money is a thief, and that the rightful owner of the money has not changed. Most people also realize that those who knowingly accept the stolen money are accomplices. With other forms of information, though, some people do not understand as clearly that the same concepts apply.
Let us consider a form of laundering where the information laundered is not money. Suppose a company has a large computer program, say to manage a database of information, and has invested a great deal of labor and time in its development. This program may be crucial to the company's daily operations, and may even be the main product the company sells. While the information (the source code) is not literally money, clearly it is very valuable. Suppose someone steals this program from the company. If this person were to simply start selling the stolen program, it would then be obvious that it was stolen and all parties would have to keep the fact secret. Suppose, though, that the thief knows a little about programming and performs some cosmetic changes to the code. He changes the comments, the variable and function names, and perhaps a few other things. Now he openly markets the modified code. Successful or not, he has laundered the information to obscure its true source.
Information laundering is not always so obvious, and can be nearly impossible to detect or prove. Suppose there are two research firms working on the same problem. One firm, company Y, engages in industrial espionage against the other company, Z, and soon learns a promising approach to solving the problem by its spying on Z. A high-ranking member of company Y who learns this secret now visits his own research labs. Instead of just giving the researchers the stolen information, though -- his researchers are far more ethical than he is -- he hints and suggests to them the line of research he knows will be productive. Soon company Y comes out with a solution much like company Z's, though clearly different, and to many people it just looks like ``great minds thinking alike.''
Not all information is purely commercial, some is highly personal. Suppose a federal agency has suspicions about a particular person, or perhaps just a desire to ``get'' them. Its agents cannot get a court order for bugging the person's house, but they simply do it anyway. Every now and then such a fishing expedition may lead to them learning of some infraction, large or small, committed by the person. Then, acting on that information, they ``just happen'' to catch the person at an infraction. Even though due process and the Constitution may not be popular these days, the agents have broken the law even if they do not use the bugged information directly or even mention it.
In a similar vein, suppose person Y desires to smear person Z, and one way or another person Y manages to violate the privacy of his victim Z -- perhaps by bugging his home, or copying his personal papers. During the course of this surveillance, in addition to amusing himself by violating Z's privacy, Y discovers some information that might be embarrassing to Z. Y is eager to spread this information around, but he cannot very well go out and announce that he bugged Z. He needs to launder the information. (I will not even get into misinformation and disinformation, and how a little bit of actual information can act as a foundation for disinformation.) So Y pretends he has learned the information some other way. Not only that, he uses his violative surveillance to learn plausible ways he can pretend to have gained the illicit information. For example, Y may learn that Z is having an affair, and also learn of Z's rendezvous location. Y then arranges for someone to ``happen to'' be there to catch Z with his paramour. This is not to excuse Z for his affair, but it is really a matter between Z and his spouse, and Y most certainly does not have the best interests of Z or his spouse at heart.
In the previous situation, Y may not even bother to carefully set Z up. He may simply start rumors. Or he might post things anonymously on the Internet hinting at embarrassing information and misinformation. (He might even subtly plant the information in a newspaper, if he has the connections and can find a newspaper unscrupulous enough.) He might even try to implicate someone else in the bugging of Z, thus smearing two people at once and maybe setting them against each other.
Probably the vilest sort of illicit information is that obtained under torture. (I will not even consider here the often dubious nature of such information.) The person who knowingly uses this information without the victim's consent has become an accomplice in the torture. Consider, for example, the person who uses Nazi ``medical'' data and then tries to obscure that fact. He is indirectly legitimizing the ``research'' and collaborating with the torturers. (At the very least there should be an open acknowledgement of the hideous source of the data, but even that is pushing it, as the only person with a right to the information is the torture victim.)
None of these situations are particularly new, but it helpful to view them as different variations on the same thing: taking information and using it without the source being apparent or your involvement being obvious. Intelligence agencies have routinely done this for ages, protecting their ``sources and methods'' -- but also harassing their perceived enemies, even among citizens of their own country. There are many examples of information laundering other than those presented here. In some cases information laundering is even a positive thing, for example in a witness protection program. There are obvious connections to the concepts of trade secrets, intellectual property, and personal privacy.
Information laundering is a useful concept, but remember proportionality: Just because you can put two things in the same category does not make them the same thing. Laundering information obtained under torture hardly compares to, say, concealing the source of information you overheard in an elevator. That sort of purposeful obfuscation is one of the main ways that torturers and their ilk attempt to rationalize their crimes. In fact, one technique of information laundering is a false charge of information laundering. For example, Y steals Z's data and then accuses Z of stealing his data.
Information technology is improving steadily, and its increasing use also increases the chances of it being misused. In Japan, for example, there have been discussions of mounting small cameras on cockroaches to inspect inside sewer lines. What if someone sent such devices into your home or business? Information stored in computers is increasingly vulnerable to theft, and is more and more often connected to large networks with dubious security. Even more exotic technology is available or under development. Our everyday finances are steadily shifting to purely electronic transactions. The potential to ruin someone, as a sport and purely by anonymous remote control, already exists. History provides numerous examples to disabuse someone of the notion that a person, group, or government would never abuse their power like that, and that ``it could never happen to me.''